In my last message, I pointed out that the Libertarian Party has
watered down its message, basically dumping the principle it was
founded on, in order to get votes. Well, while I'm at it, I might
as well offend some more people. The Constitution Party is also
worthless. Why? Several reasons:

1) Contrary to the divine holiness some people image the
Constitution to have, it really is just a piece of paper (or
parchment). While some of what the Founders wrote--the Declaration
more so than the Constitution--expressed some pretty darn important
and profound concepts, they still ended up creating a ruling class.
It was supposed to be a tiny, "limited" ruling class, but they
still pretended to bestow upon politicians certain powers that you
don't have, I don't have, and none of the writers or signers of the
Constitution had. Nice trick.

Sorry, but the term "Constitutional principles" is an oxymoron. The
Declaration, for example, stated that all men are created equal, in
terms of rights, but the Constitution (in true Animal Farm fashion)
then claimed to give some of those "equal" people the right to
forcibly rob all the other "equal" people. Yes, the power of
"taxation" was supposed to be significantly limited in several
ways, but it was still the power to steal. How does that match the
notion of everyone being "created equal," and the only purpose of
"government" being to protect rights? It doesn't. It is a direct,
blatant, glaring contradiction. And working hard to get us back to
a glaring contradiction, as the Constitution Party does, is not a
good idea.

2) The Constitution cannot consist of unwaivering principles,
because it was designed to be amended. If the control freaks go
through the official, formal procedure of "amending" out all those
pesky limitations, then what? Then totalitarianism will become
"Constitutional," and what would the Constitution Party say then?
The truth is, instead of being some perfect expression of truth
incarnate, the Constitution started as a huge, self-contradictory,
illegitimate compromise, between some people who actually wanted
individual freedom, and others who wanted to rule.

(It's worth noting that the predictions of the anti-Federalists,
who didn't like the Constitution, turned out to be about a zillion
times more accurate than the promises of the Federalists, who swore
that the beast they were creating would remain small and meek.)

3) People have been so thoroughly trained to believe that freedom
must be "legalized" before it is good, that they remain determined
to bash their heads against the wall of the "political process" to
achieve it. This is true of the Constitution Party and many others.
If you believe in inalienable rights, why are you asking the
politicians for "legislative" permission to do things? For example,
the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution)
describes things that "government" was not supposed to do at all--
yet they do them on a regular basis. If your answer is to try to
elect people who will change that, you're implicitly conceding that
they weren't inalienable rights to begin with. By definition, if
you need a "law" to allow something, it's not a "right." So, aside
from the contradictions in the Constitution itself, if you actually
believed in the "inalienability" of rights described therein, you'd
be doing whatever you could--including things the politicians have
deemed "illegal"--to defend those rights. Begging the master to let
you speak your mind, or to let you be armed, or to spare you from
random searches and interrogations, and so on, carries with it the
implied message that you need the master's permission to do those
things. As a result, trying to regain "rights" via the political
process is an inherent contradiction.

4) The American people, having been thoroughly indoctrinated into
the cult of statism and the worship of collectivism, don't want
what the Constitution describes. (Neither do I, but for very
different reasons.) By playing the "democracy" game, the
Constitution Party is basically conceding that what the majority
wants is what matters. Yes, they would like the majority to agree
with them, but since it doesn't, why play a game (i.e., voting)
that merely reinforces the looney notion that the majority has the
right to rule in any way it sees fit (or in any way it's duped into
supporting)?

5) The Constitution created the monster you see now. No, this is
not what it described, but (just like the theory of communism)
that's what it actually resulted in in the real world. So,
pretending for a moment that there is the slightest chance in hell
that the American people would even support going back to the
Constitution, why would anyone expect it to turn out differently
next time?

(Incidentally, the ink was still wet on the Constitution when the
principles described therein were trashed. If you haven't before,
do a little research on the crushing of the Whiskey Rebellion and
Shay's Rebellion, the Louisiana Purchase, and the Aliens and
Sedition Acts, for starters. Each of the first three "Presidents"
trashed the Constitution, and any principles it pretended to be
founded upon. Pretty much every President since then has done the
same, though some more dramatically than others.)

- ------------------------------------

Again, I eagerly await the hate mail, since I just bashed what many
treat as infallible, holy doctrine: the Constitution. But before
you tell me how stupid/evil/insane I am, consider this:

There have always been opportunistic control freaks waiting to take
any bit of truth, any righteous cause, any good idea, and turn it
into power and control for themselves. The Founders stated a lot of
profoundly important truths. For example, had they quit after the
Declaration of Independence, I would have had very few complaints.
But the fundamental principles stated by some were immediately
hijacked by others for their own power.

Ironically, we have a fine analogy to study today. The Republican
Party is now going to great lengths to hijack the ideas and
enthusiasm of the "Tea Party" movement, to use as a source of power
for itself. In other words, they are trying to use the advocacy of
freedom as a tool to gain dominion over others. This is an exact
rerun of what happened a couple hundred years ago, when a few pro-
freedom radicals (e.g., Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Thomas
Jefferson, etc.) spoke the truth and got some attention, and some
political conmen hijacked the results, and used it as a tool for
power for themselves. The result was the Constitution. So before
you bash me, make sure you're not accidentally cheering for the
usurpers, thieves, liars and control freaks, instead of the people
(like me) who actually want you to be free.

(P.S. For those of you who think that at least a step toward
freedom would be an improvement, I sympathize a bit. However, when
has that ever actually happened? And why is there any reason to
expect it to happen now, because of any "political" efforts?)